A user of Customer Premise Equipment (“CPE”) initiates a call on a network. The CPE in one example comprises a telephony device. The CPE in one example employs a call request signaling, for example, a Dual Tone Multi Frequency (“DTMF”) protocol, to initiate the call. The user of the CPE initiates the call to an application server component that provides one or more services for the call. The application server component is located within an intermediate network associated with the call.
For example, the application server component provides one or more services to the CPE. The services in one example comprise one or more conference call services. In order to interact with the services, the user of the CPE employs one or more touch-tones or one or more voice commands. The application server component receives the touch-tones and/or voice commands over a voice channel associated with the call. The touch-tones and/or voice commands in one example are heard by users of all other CPEs on the conference call.
The application server component receives one or more messages associated with the call from the network. The messages associated with the call comprise information regarding the calling and/or called CPEs. The application server component provides the services based upon the information present in the messages associated with the call, for example, the touch-tones and/or voice commands. The services provided by the application server component are limited to the information provided in the messages received from network elements, such as the application server component and/or a switch component, associated with the call. As one shortcoming, the restriction of the services provided by the application server component to the information provided in the messages undesirably limits the types of services provided to the users of the CPEs.
Thus, a need exists to provide one or more services that are not limited to the information present in the one or more messages received from the network.